#roger hcs

dis js for fun (might seem a teeny bit ooc for book roger but i tried to imagine him as a modern teenager not a 50s boy!)

some of these were discussed w @jackmerridews but i js wanted to post them cuz they fun

as we know he is very antisocial. the only person who genuinely will stop to talk with him is simon, and simon already gets shit chucked at him by year sevens so to be short no one fucks with him

used to do cornrows, but when the whole "nonchalant dreadhead" shit came out and started trending he took one look at it and RAN to the hairdressers and got dreads done

as a result he began walking to school with this new walk ALL nonchalantly like nothing has changed. meanwhile the whole school is going insane because roger has never changed his appearance (minus a couple of piercings)

and he puts on this low croaky voice and begins ending every message he sends with "ig."

maurice asking for homework? "no ig." jack telling him the time of choir practice? "be there ig." simon asking him if he wants to hang out? "die ig."

he wanted to change his name to kai because it sounded so much more nonchalant and chic but then his mum (sweetest woman alive btw) CRIED when he asked to, and he got pissed off and never talked about it again

ofc he has his terrifying food preferences, (as seen in my other post) he likes to consume raw meat, and as a result gets super duper sick and spends time off school cross in his bed

the only person patient enough to braid his hair would be simon, i think when they were littluns themselves they probably

jack probably boasted for ages about how his nimble fingers could master the art of braiding, but after one triumphant braid that took a solid 30 minutes roger was cross and had to remind him that he has to do the entire head of hair

he is such a fucking delinquent, but not loud and yelling about it, he burns a lot of things i think. he probably owns some really cool knives and lighters that he keeps in his blazer pocket at school

he also bullies people a lot, but not like outwardly, what he does is he goes after quieter kids who get called "npcs" by every1 else, and i think he'd be using some psychological torture😭

roger because he's got a really low bullshit tolerance and a short temper, can't help getting into fights (god, you do NOT want to know how many of his bartending stints ended that way) and generally just cannot stand being around the same people for too long. sure, he's a charismatic guy. even after withdrawal he's still quick-witted and has a gorgeous smile, and everyone loves him on sight, more so once they've spent an hour with him. but people get on roger's NERVES. and he has a hard time keeping his mouth shut, when someone's being a piece of shit right in front of him. coworker gossip practically always spells the end for him. sometimes he does his best to keep a lid on it til he fucking explodes, loses his shit and starts yelling (and/or swinging). regardless of if he's fired or if he walks out in a rage, though, he rarely makes it more than three months. if he makes it to six, his friends throw him a party. it's awful. he hates it, but he does love the cake...

and mark because he's too finicky, is never satisfied with what he's doing if it's not something he absolutely LOVES (it never is), and has this stubborn underlying fear that if he stays in one rut too long then he's never going to be able to dig himself back out, that he'll never be able to pursue what he really wants to if the opportunity presents itself or he'll never find the motivation to if he lets himself get sucked into the drudgery of service level jobs now, and it's so fucking irrational it drives him insane, because he KNOWS it's stupid to feel bad for doing what he has to do to buy groceries every week, but he cant help himself. so he puts in his two weeks and quietly disappears from every job he works just shy of the seven month mark, and they never hear from him again.

hmm, i feel like roger would definitely have MORE tattoos. i see mimi as being interested in tattoos, but she’s very young compared to him. would have had less time and less money to get them. roger was the lead singer of a metal-rock band, he most likely had some extra cash for a couple of years, and probably plenty of buddies willing to ink him for free or at least discounted.

plus… i assume that roger got his diagnosis when he was a bit older than mimi was when she got hers. the ADA technically makes it illegal to refuse services to people with blood-borne illnesses but i can see the whole idea of going to a shop and asking someone to jab you with needles, knowing you have a contagious disease in your veins, would be… anxiety-inducing. i mean. you don’t know how they’re going to react. angrily, maybe even violently, depending on what sort of neighborhood you’re in… i headcanon roger to have gotten most of his many, many tattoos before his diagnosis for this very reason. and mimi… i dunno, i don’t think that she would bother. she’s got plenty of other forms of self-expression to fall back on.

if anything, i can imagine mimi getting tattoos after she gets together with roger, inspired by him, emboldened. i’m sure he could bring her to whatever artist he’s gone to, who he knows will be safe and cool about it.

possibly they’d get some cute, tacky little couple’s tattoos. i think mimi would like that. and i think roger would take basically any excuse to get inked. after a certain number, we all sort of get like that. it’s… addictive. the pain, the intimacy of it, and the look of the ink shiny under your skin when it first heals up.

mark, though. when mark lays a claim he wants their friends to see it. mimi, and collins, and maureen - he'll bite roger black and blue until he's a trembling, swearing, groaning mess and the next morning he'll leave him in bed by himself and start a pot of coffee, knowing the scent of it will lure him out in all his rumpled glory, covered in angry marks. owned.

the works. roger starts it, because roger is an asshole who can always tell when someone wants his dick, and mark is fumbling and awkward mad adorable really fun to fuck with. so roger starts flirting, you know, just a tease, getting in his personal space, making super lewd comments and eyefucking him and generally making him squirm. at first mark is completely mortified and starts avoiding him COMPLETELY and roger almost starts to feel bad, so the next time he sees him he makes a snorting non-apology, like, "dude, i was just fucking with you, you're too easy."

but roger doesn't know mark very well yet. so he doesn't recognize the gleam in mark's eye as he tells him that it's okay, too-sweetly, head cocked to the side and eyes trailing speculatively down to his belt buckle.

so, mark is the one who escalates it, because he's got to get roger back, right? collins thinks it's hilarious, roger blushes like a tomato when mark takes him off guard, and also, his guitar callouses are disturbingly nice. and provoking him always makes him take it just that extra inch further.

and honestly, mark has the advantage here, because he's not straight, so he thinks he's got it in the bag. but roger actually isn't either, not that he's ever told anyone that.

neither of them is mortally offended when mark, clumsy as he is, leans a little too far in one day and their lips finally meet.

and mark's certainly not going to let roger's tongue freak him out, the next time, when it darts out to trace the seam of his lips before he pulls away.

then it gets... a little out of hand, but they're both so fucking into it, neither of them wants to call it off. both of their girlfriends have long since given up and are sitting back to watch the fireworks. neither of them wants to lose, or to have to give it up. so they're having incredibly charged, competitive sex on every surface in their apartment and in several very public places, and once in april's apartment, probably, before finally having a screaming argument leading to the roughest, hardest, loudest fuck of their lives, and while mark is bent practically in half with his wrists bound together over his head he starts babbling, and admits that he loves him, and THATS when roger comes. and then. uh. he's got... some soul searching to do.

except there's no time for that. and mark is still squirming and panting under him, half-desperate, half-dying of embarrassment and underneath it all he's painfully shy and roger realizes, fuck, he can actually read mark like a book, and then he realizes, fuck, again, fuck fuck fuck, because it's starting to seem like maybe he and mark have been aggressively dating since they MET, and that's... fucking insane.

and all he can think about right now is kissing mark fucking senseless so that's what he does, pulls out and licks into his mouth and replaces his cock with his fingers, fucking him slow and deep until he's begging and crying and his hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat, trailing hot, wet red marks down from his jaw to his throat to his collarbone, down his chest, until he can take his cock into his mouth, and mark blows his load in about five seconds, and roger mumbles "i love you too" into his inner thigh while he's still trembling with it, muffled but utterly sincere.

and then when he sits up they make eye contact, bright red and mute with the sheer absurdity of it all, and mark drily asks if roger is ever planning on letting him out of these cuffs.

later, when mark's still in the shower, roger wanders out still smelling like sex, wearing one of mark's too-small t-shirts and finds collins at the table eating cereal, and is like, "so, me and mark", and collins just snorts and says, "i know. jesus fucking christ, it took you long enough." to which roger just scowls and stalks away, because there's really nothing he can say to contradict that.

it starts when he meets mark.

mark is the first transgender person that roger has ever actually known, not just in passing but as a good friend… a best friend. for the first few months of their roommatehood he has no fucking idea and then, after a long day of shenanigans and a longer night of smoking with collins and drinking themselves stupid on the roof, mark rolls over and just blurts it out, like a confession, defiant and pleading and roger is just fucking gobsmacked.

things are awkward for a few days. mark probably thinks that roger is eyeing him like that because he’s got some transphobic shit to work through but the truth is that roger has always felt weird, out-of-place, defiant. he doesn’t know what the hell he is. he doesn’t fucking get it.

his dad, before he’d left, had told him to be a fucking man. roger doesn’t know what that means. looking at mark, he’s even more lost. if someone like mark can exist, then roger’s entire perspective needs to shift. immediately.

he asks mark about it, eventually. How Did You Know? 

and mark levels a knowing look at him before he speaks.

he turns mark’s words over in his mind that night, lying awake in a tangle of sheets with mark hanging off of the other side of the mattress, already knocked out. he can’t sleep. he can’t stop trying to figure it out. mark talks about feeling misplaced too, broken, but somehow he’d KNOWN he was a man, somewhere inside. at least, mostly a man. that’s how he’d described it. when roger reaches into himself, he comes up completely fucking empty. there’s nothing. at first, when mark had told him, he’d thought, “fuck, am i a woman?” but that’s not right. he knows without even having to really search for it.

but if it feels wrong to be a man, and wrong to be a woman, then where the hell does that leave him?

he asks mark one night after a show, sweat and hair gel plastering their foreheads together in the dark. sharing breath. he asks him, nervously, dizzily, if there’s a third option that he doesn’t know about. because he’s fucking lost. he doesn’t know what to do. who is he supposed to be?

between kisses, frantic, mark sucks in a breath and gasps, “you don’t have to be anything, roger.” and “god, oh my god, you’re so-”

and for a split second everything is frozen, crystal clear, and roger feels a sudden sense of overwhelming peace as it falls into place.

he doesn’t have to be anything.

fuck gender. fuck everything. roger is a rockstar. a fucking supernova. if space can be empty, containing so much light, so many stars, then so can he.

he’ll wear whatever the fuck he wants, call himself whatever he wants, be what he wants, because at the end of the day he doesn’t answer to anyone but himself. so he pierces his ears a second time, and his tongue, and buys a skirt one weekend at a thrift shop with mark. asks him, nonchalant, if he thinks it will fit over his hips, and mark turns to him with a raised eyebrow and slowly smiles.

he doesn’t particularly feel like he needs a word for it. collins gives him one anyway, because that’s what he does. because that’s how he’s always felt, too.

roger looks around him and realizes that he’s never been wrong, or broken, or misplaced at all. he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.

so when he grows his hair long and goes out in makeup, in leggings, wearing hoops in his ears, and hears children ask their mothers what he is, he can just roll his eyes and move along. no more scowling, no more hiding away in the apartment, no more paralysis for half an hour before ever leaving it, secretly wondering if what he wants to wear is allowed, how it will be perceived.

for the first time in his life, roger is comfortable in his own skin. the pressure’s been lifted. there are no standards to live up to when you’re none of the above.

otp: marker (mark/roger) OF COURSE

brotp: roger/collins

notp: can’t ship him with maureen, it just doesn’t compute to me